CES: ARM demos Cortex-A9 chip - the heart of future Apple devices?

Jonny Evans

January 06, 2010

Industry Intel

Those nice processor designers over at ARM are using giant trade show CES to exhibit their forthcoming Cortex-A9 chip reference design - and eyes on site tell us the chip more than holds its own against the 1.6GHz Atom processor it’s put up against.

The Cortex-A9 does seem slightly slower than the Intel Atom - but consider this: the ARM chip runs at 500MHz compared to the Atom's 1.6GHz.

Why should this be of interest to you? Apple's iPhone as well as many competing devices (including the just released Nexus One) are presently powered by ARM processors based on the previous Cortex A8 design.

With Apple’s PA Semi team’s expertise tweaking the tech, ARM’s Cortex-A9 processor looks very promising as the heart of the future Apple tablet, while its use in future generation iPhones also remains a powerful possibility.

This 40-nanometre processor offers its high speed at impressively low power, which ARM pegs at 0.25-Watts per CPU. The product’s being aimed at the market for fast small home devices.

A December 2008 Computerworld article by our own Seth Weintraub predicts Apple’s tablet will be based on ARM’s Cortex architecture.

Now, we know ARM licenses its chip designs to others for manufacture. And we also know Apple’s former PA Semi engineers are expert at tweaking ARM processor designs to yield even more bang for the buck.

"This is a huge departure from what we've done in the past", Eric Schorn, vice president, marketing for ARM's processor division, told ZDNet UK. "We really wanted to take off the handcuffs and see what could be done with performance, performance, performance."

"The sweet spot for most customers is dual-core," Schorn added, "but the base design can go up to quad-core and some partners are already building those. Eight way is coming. Everyone's high-end roadmap is putting down more cores, and we do that. We're headed in the direction of Intel's mainstream processors. We have other plans that surpass the current performance, and we'll intercept Intel in a high-margin area, not just with Atom."

Via: MacRumors

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Comments (3)

duhhhhhhh (not verified) | January 06, 2010 - 6:38am

am i to assume that this maybe has something to do with grand central if my maths is right 24 500mhz processors comes to 12000 mhz, somewhere possibly in the same ballpark as far as clock speed but at only 6 watts?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 06, 2010 - 2:03pm

Very good article and probably correct prediction of the ARM CortexA9 multicore, superscalar processor, being produced and optimized for implementation into the iSlate, and future Apple devices. According to the ARM specifications, architecture, and Wikipedia, the CortexA9 with 4 cores, can be clocked at 1GHz, Plus. The key point is that superscalar execution, allows up to 16 instructions, per clock cycle, and with very low thermal output and constraints. I think Apple's PA Semi is a private ARM licensee, and has been working, tweaking, designing, and making this Chip ready for the tablet. Combining this CortexA9 chip, with a powerful mobile GPU, from ATI or Nvidia, would optimize fast graphical, 3D, and user interfaces. Just my thoughts. A SoC ,system-on-a-chip, using the ARM A9 with integration of the cpu and gpu, on the same chip, is another possibility for PA Semi.

Pats (not verified) | January 07, 2010 - 6:05am

Very unlikely that the ARM design from Apple would use a GPU from ATI/Nvidia. Apple's design will use Power VR IP just like in the Iphone. Apple is a major shareholder in Imagination and has licensed their IP. The 543MP would be a nice fit, but I doubt PA SEMI has had time to integrate that yet since it is too new.